Passengers at national airports rise 2.4% in the 1st quarter to 13.9 million

National airports handled 13.953 million passengers in the first quarter, a year-on-year increase of 2.4 percent driven by the historic monthly highs reached in January and March, the National Statistics Institute ( INE ) announced today.

According to the INE's "Rapid Air Transport Statistics", France was the main country of origin and destination for flights in the first quarter of this year, having registered a "slight growth" in the number of disembarked passengers and a decrease in embarked passengers compared to the same period in 2024 (+0.4 percent and -1.3 percent, respectively).

The United Kingdom and Spain occupied the second and third positions as the main countries of origin and destination, followed by Germany in fourth place.

Fifth place was occupied by Brazil as the country of origin and Italy as the country of destination for flights.

In the first three months of the year, Lisbon airport handled 54.6 percent of total passengers (7.6 million), a year-on-year increase of 1.4 percent.

Faro airport recorded a 4.0 percent growth in passenger movement (1.2 million; 8.9 percent of the total) and Porto airport accounted for 23.0 percent of the total number of passengers handled (3.2 million) and increased by 2.6 percent.

In the first quarter, the INE also reports a “slight increase” (+0.4 percent) in the movement of cargo and mail at national airports.

The movement of goods at Lisbon airport represented 77.9 percent of the total, reaching 46.9 thousand tonnes (+1.5 percent compared to the same period in 2024). At the remaining airports, the movement of cargo and mail decreased by 3.1 percent.

Considering only the month of March 2025, 18.7 thousand aircraft landed at national airports on commercial flights, corresponding to 5.4 million passengers (boarding, disembarking and direct transits), and 22.8 thousand tons of cargo and mail were handled (+2.5 percent, +2.1 percent and +3.9 percent, respectively, compared to March 2024).

In the previous month, variations of -0.2 percent, -0.5 percent and -2.6 percent had been recorded, in the same order.

After the monthly record high recorded in January and a “slight decrease” in February, the INE highlights that a new monthly record high was reached in March in the number of passengers handled at national airports.

In terms of arrivals, there was an average daily disembarkation of 88.2 thousand passengers in March, a higher figure than that recorded in the same month in 2024 (86.5 thousand; +1.9 percent).

In March 2025, 82.5 percent of passengers disembarking at national airports corresponded to international traffic, reaching 2.3 million (+2.4 percent), the majority coming from the European continent (67.9 percent of the total), a year-on-year growth of 1.3 percent.

The American continent was the second main origin, accounting for 9.5 percent of the total number of disembarked passengers (+4.8 percent).

Regarding embarked passengers, 82.0 percent corresponded to international traffic, making a total of 2.2 million passengers (+3.0 percent), with 69.2 percent of the total as the main destination airports on the European continent, 3.0 percent more than in March 2024.

Airports in the Americas were the second main destination for embarked passengers (8.6 percent of the total; +1.2 percent).

Photo: Longxiang Qian / Pexels.